In baseball, the batting average (BA) is defined by the number of hits divided by at bats. It is usually reported to three decimal places and pronounced as if it were multiplied by 1,000: a player with a batting average of .300 is "batting three-hundred." A point (or percentage point) is understood to be .001. If necessary to break ties, batting averages could be taken to more than three decimal places.

Outfielder Ty Cobb, whose career ended in 1928, has the highest batting average in Major League Baseball (MLB) history.^{[1][note 1]} He batted .366 over 24 seasons, mostly with the Detroit Tigers. In addition, he won a record 11 batting titles for leading the American League in BA over the course of an entire season. He batted over .360 in 11 consecutive seasons from 1909 to 1919.^[2] Oscar Charleston is second all-time with a career batting average of .364.^[3] He had the highest career batting average in the history of the combined Negro leagues from 1920 to 1948.^[4] Rogers Hornsby has the third highest BA of all-time, at .358.^[1] He won seven batting titles in the National League (NL) and has the highest NL average in a single season since 1900, when he batted .424 in 1924. He batted over .370 in six consecutive seasons.^[5]

Other notable players include: Shoeless Joe Jackson batted .356 over 13 seasons before he was permanently suspended from organized baseball in 1921 for his role in the Black Sox Scandal.^[6] Jud Wilson played professionally from 1922 to 1945 and twice played on Negro World Series championship teams. Lefty O'Doul first came to the major leagues as a pitcher, but after developing a sore arm, he converted to an outfielder and won two batting titles.^[7] Turkey Stearnes twice led the Negro National League in batting average. Ed Delahanty's career was cut short when he fell into the Niagara Falls and died during the 1903 season.^[8] Ted Williams remains the most recent player to bat .400 in a major-league season.^[9] Babe Ruth hit for a career .342 average and held the major-league record for career home runs from 1921 until 1974.

A player must have a minimum of 3,000 plate appearances to qualify for the list.^[1]

Different sources of baseball records present somewhat differing lists of career batting average leaders. There is consensus that Ty Cobb leads this category. Further rankings vary by source, primarily due to differences in minimums needed to qualify (number of games played or plate appearances), or differences in early baseball records. Baseball-Reference.com includes the Negro League teams considered major leagues by Major League Baseball,^[10] as reflected in the below listing (top 100). Career batting average leaders (top 10) per some alternate sources can be found at Batting average (baseball)#All-time leaders.

As of October 2023^[update], no active player appears in the below list. The active player ranking highest is José Altuve, at 136th with a .3071 career batting average.^[1]

Source:^[1]

• List of Major League Baseball players with a .400 batting average in a season
• List of Major League Baseball career on-base percentage leaders
• List of Major League Baseball career slugging percentage leaders
• List of Major League Baseball career OPS leaders